Landowners didn't receive services, say city is wasting taxpayer money
A group of Taylor landowners’ legal victory in fighting municipal annexation of their land has proved short-lived following the city’s recent appeal to reverse a judge’s decision.
In a saga dating to 2018, Kristopher and Jamie Kibodeaux recently scored a legal victory in their efforts toward disannexation to remove their property from the city boundaries.
After receiving no city services in exchange for annexation – utilities, emergency services and the like – the couple took legal action to detach their land from Taylor’s jurisdiction.
The Kibodeauxs emerged victorious in mid-July after their years-long battle at disannexation when the 425th state District Court Judge Betsy Lambeth in Georgetown ruled in their favor.
“No water, no sewer, no justice – until now,” the landowners’ attorneys at Cobb & Johns PLLC of Austin touted on their website.
“Our win against the city of Taylor’s empty promises,” the headline of their narrative continued in describing what they described as a “landmark” legal victory.
The celebration was brief. On July 21, the city quietly contested the judge’s decision and filed for an “accelerated appeal,” moving the case next to the Third Court of Appeals in Austin.
Taylor City Council members discussed the lawsuit in executive session during their July 24 meeting, only to emerge at 10:12 p.m. with no official action taken.
The Press reached out to Mayor Dwayne Ariola prior to the council meeting, but he did not respond to a request for comment.
“At this time, we cannot speculate as to the final resolution of this case and we are unable to speak publicly about pending or ongoing litigation,” city spokesman Daniel Seguin wrote in response to an email.
For his part, Kris Kibodeaux expressed disappointment at the legal wrangling even while remaining optimistic it might soon be resolved.
“It dampens my spirits because it drags it out longer,” he told the Press in a telephone interview.
“It’s wasting taxpayer money,” he added, alluding to litigation costs incurred by the city in stretching out the case. “The judge had already made a decision.”
For the Kibodeauxs, the appeal is the latest hurdle in their years-long disannexation effort.
The city seven years ago annexed their 5-acre tract resting along a stretch of CR 404 known as Windy Ridge Road, an area then outside the city limits but within the extraterritorial jurisdiction, or ETJ, of Taylor.
Other Taylor residents have also fought the city’s annexation efforts, including Robert Marek, said attorney Chris Johns. Marek’s lawsuit also was discussed during the executive session.
“Yes, we also won a case for the Mareks and several others related to the city’s denials of ETJ-removal petitions. The city had claimed that the existence of development agreements with those landowners meant that the city didn’t have to release them from the ETJ,” Johns said. He added, “The district court (same judge as in Kibodeaux case) ruled against the city and awarded our side $78,259 in attorneys’ fees.”
That case is also being appealed by City Hall.
Litigation spurred by unkept city promises It’s not unusual for cities to annex properties to expand their tax base and exert regulatory control over land use with an eye for organized, sustainable development. But in exchange, cities are supposed to extend essential services while generating the annexation-fueled revenue – a “social contract” the city failed to honor, the landowners’ attorney contends.
“They can do that, but they have to provide services, and service plans are required,” Johns told the Press during a telephone interview. “Part of what happened here is the city made promises but fell behind the time frame when they made those promises.”
Citing Chapter 43 of the local government code, Johns said cities generally have up to 4 ½ years to bring services to areas after annexation, with an extra 1 ½ years given for special circumstances.
“The law allows for a little bit of a grace period, but the typical time is 4 ½ years,” he said. “The cities will sometimes argue, ‘We’ll send police, emergency services your way.’ That’s wonderful but the really valuable things are water, wastewater, fire hydrants. Those are big-ticket items.”
For years now, Kibodeaux said those are things they’ve gone without since their land was annexed.
Transplants from Hutto, the couple acquired the land in Taylor with visions of pristine prairie land (big enough to raise chickens, he noted in a past interview) upon which to build their dream home.
But since the services-devoid annexation, the landowners have been in a holding pattern of sorts as they wait for the city to honor its promised municipal amenities. In the meantime, the couple have delayed construction given an unknown future, living in temporary 1,100-square-feet quarters compared to the 3,000-square-foot dwelling they once enjoyed before moving to Taylor while incurring three times the taxes after annexation, Kibodeaux said.
“It’s been a big downsize,” he said. “We had some pretty big plans for our property that came to a screeching halt.”
Calls for reform take root Given its ties to the American Dream, land ownership is often discussed in visceral terms evocative of pride, stability and legacy.
The title of a March 2023 paper by the Texas Public Policy Foundation espousing change mirrors the sense of self-determination: “Let my People Go: Empowering Texans Through Disannexation Reform.”
In the treatise, Foundation officials attribute added revenue as a main driver of municipal annexation, with a measurable uptick in such activity seen in the last couple of decades.
“By the 1990s, municipalities were commonly engaged in an abusive practice known as involuntary annexation in which cities annexed land without the consent of the annexed residents,” Foundation officials wrote.
For the most part, officials noted, annexed land historically has been located in cities’ ETJs, officials noted.
“The primary motivation for these selective land grabs was revenue-related,” the paper continues while quoting Rice University urban planning authority Stephen Klineberg: “When rich people go out into the suburbs, that is where the money is. You can use that tax revenue to develop the urban core.”
Municipal motives remain unclear
The Kibodeauxs’ attorney resisted the urge to outright assign motive for Taylor’s annexation tactics, including theorizing whether development of the massive Samsung Austin Semiconductor plant nearby – and its ripple effect of bolstered property values in its orbit – figured into the municipal mindset.
“When you’re dealing with cities, it’s hard to impute a uniform intent on a group of people,” Johns said.
“I’m not saying there was no intention at the beginning not to provide services, but we have all these obligations to facilitate Samsung being here. So let’s put all of our eggs in one basket, developing the areas we want to connect to Samsung,” he said, surmising city officials’ possible line of thinking.”
He added, “I don’t know if that was their calculus but there is a shiny new object to go after.”
The Legislature recently took up the matter of disannexation reform during the most recent session with passage of Senate Bill 1844 in May that provides for a more streamlined approach for property owners to disannex if a municipality fails to provide agreed-upon services.
The bill takes effect Sept. 1. The bill’s passage may have come too late to help the Kibodeauxs with their legal fight now tied up in the appeals process.
But the family patriarch suggested he intends to keep up the fight, no matter how long it might take.
“This has become more about principle,” Kibodeaux said.
